Thursday, October 7, 2010

gratitude mobile!

If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily.

~Gerald Good

This upcoming weekend is Thanksgiving here in Canada. To me, Thanksgiving is a time when we stop and literally "give thanks". The garden has been abundant...the pantry is full...the children are healthy...we are surrounded by nature, clean air and water...the list goes on and on! There is SO much to be thankful for!

I'm sure you can relate as mothers, to wanting to pass on the notion of gratitude to your children. Here's a beautiful craft that will allow the whole family to express their thankfulness.

You will need:

watercolour paper

paints in autumn colours

string

glue stick

embroidery hoop

First we painted our paper, on one side with bright autumny colours...reds, yellows, oranges!

Then using a leaf template we cut out many many leaf shapes. Maples, Oaks, Birch!

Put two pieces of paper back to back and cut out your shapes.

Give each family member a number of leaves...Now...get each family member to write something on the leaf that they're grateful for.

Now get some lengths of string...use a variety of lengths. Sandwich the thread in between the leaves by glueing the leaves together, (you can faintly see the string sticking out of the top of that leaf)

Tie them around your embroidery hoop.

And finally tie some string at the top so you can hang the whole thing!

Now you have no excuse for not feeling gratitude! The thing I love most about this mobile is that it just seems to always be moving...it reminds me of the leaves dancing from the trees!

Happy Thanksgiving Canadian friends!

And to all of our readers we are truly THANKFUL for YOU!!!!

Since it's a holiday weekend, we're taking a break here at Twig and Toadstool...we'll be back early next week with more crafty goodness and every day life musings!

Brilliant! We're for sure going to do this before our Thanksgiving meal on Sunday. Thanks so much and Happy Thanksgiving from BC.I'm thankful for all the wonderful mamas out their that share their inspirational ideas!

This is awesome! Thanks for the idea. We're going to do this this weekend for sure. I hadn't even thought of doing a thankfulness-based craft, for some reason (probably pregnancy brain, I blame a lot on that these days)--I needed this reminder!

Thank you so much for this post. I immediately sent to my daughter's kindergarten teacher and for the Us thanksgiving, the class made a gratitude mobile that hangs in the entry way to the class room. They loved the project!